The Off-Site Senate: Rare, But Not Unprecedented

When Tuesday’s East Coast earthquake forced the Senate to convene its daily session off of Capitol Hill, it was not the first time the world’s greatest deliberative body met outside the Senate chamber, according to the Senate Historical Office. It was just the first time the Senate was forced off campus by a force of nature.

The U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Just nine years ago, on Sept. 6, 2002, the Senate chose to hold a ceremonial joint session with the House at Federal Hall in New York City, for a one-year memorial of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The only nonceremonial occasion for a displaced Senate came long before that. In 1814, after the Capitol was burned during the war of 1812, the Senate was forced to meet in Blodgett’s Hotel on 8th and E Streets N.W.

According to the Senate historian, the hotel was one of the city’s few structures undamaged by the British invasion because it also housed the U.S. Patent Office.

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